Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has convened hearings “on how Democrats, at every turn, blocked investigations into the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history,” said Smith in his opening statement.
“Today’s hearing has been a long time coming. For more than two years, Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history, the massive fraud perpetrated in the unemployment insurance program that skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic. While many Americans who actually qualified for these benefits were left struggling to reclaim their benefits and their identity, upwards of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been stolen.”
Labor Department Inspector General Larry D. Turner testified before the Committee that the amount of fraud in the pandemic relief program has topped $191 billion, with the investigation ongoing.
The Labor Department believes a larger share of unemployment insurance benefits were improperly paid than its previous calculations — 21.5 percent versus 18.7 percent of the total last year — accounting for the upward shift in the estimated amount lost to waste and fraud.
But federal officials acknowledge that they cannot precisely identify how much federal aid was wrongfully sent out.
UI benefits are just one of a handful of large government programs that were created or expanded during the pandemic to help individuals and businesses harmed by the disruptions it caused to the economy.
That’s at least one in five dollars appropriated by the federal government for extended unemployment benefits during the pandemic that ended up in the pockets of people who weren’t eligible.
For our VIPs: The Legacy of Pandemic Emergency Relief Programs: Biggest Scam in U.S. History
Where did it all go? California offers one example. Unbelievably, there were 35,000 unemployment claims filed by California prison inmates, and at least 20,000 of the claims were paid out.
How could that have happened? It turns out that the identities of benefit recipients weren’t cross-checked against those who are incarcerated. This routine, mundane security measure that required a few computer keystrokes cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.
At the time, policymakers made the choice to prioritize getting money out quickly, sometimes at the expense of safeguards to prevent fraudsters from exploiting the system, and the government has subsequently stepped up efforts to recover misspent funds or prosecute bad actors.
Wednesday’s hearing comes a week after one held by the House Oversight Committee with an overlapping witness list. During that earlier hearing government officials warned that these types of assistance programs continue to have significant gaps that leave them susceptible to theft and wrongful spending.
And yet Democrats approved the spending anyway. More than $650 billion in unemployment relief, and Democrats didn’t see fit to hold any hearings or conduct any investigations into how much was wasted or stolen.
Let’s see if Republicans can do any better.
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